OPTICAL SCANNER, IMAGE FORMING APPARATUS, DIFFRACTIVE OPTICAL ELEMENT FOR SPLITTING LUMINOUS FLUX AND METHOD OF MANUFACTURING DIFFRACTIVE OPTICAL ELEMENT

摘要

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To obtain an optical scanner in which a luminous flux from a common light source is divided and made incident on different stages of deflective reflection faces for scanning different faces to be scanned and the deterioration of beam spot diameters is reduced, and to obtain an image forming apparatus. SOLUTION: The optical scanner is provided with: a light source; an optical deflector equipped with a plurality of deflective reflection faces in a subscanning direction; a diffractive optical element for splitting luminous flux which splits the luminous flux from the light source into a plurality of luminous fluxes which are respectively made incident on the plurality of deflective reflection faces; and a scanning optical system which focuses the luminous fluxes deflected with the optical deflector on the faces to be scanned, and respectively different faces to be scanned are scanned with the plurality of luminous fluxes which are made incident to the optical deflector. COPYRIGHT: (C)2008,JPO&INPIT